From the Inquisition Pyre to Insertion Into the Church: the Familial And

social sciences $€ £ ¥ Article From the Inquisition Pyre to Insertion into the Church: The Familial and Social Trajectory of Hernando Ortiz, a Jewish Convert in the Spanish Empire in the 16th Century Clara Ramirez Institute for Research on University and Education, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City 04510, Mexico; [email protected] Abstract: This is a study of the trajectory of a Jewish converso who had a brilliant career at the University of Mexico in the 16th century: he received degrees from the faculties of arts, theology and law and was a professor for more than 28 years. He gained prestige and earned the respect of his fellow citizens, participated in monarchical politics and was an active member of his society, becoming the elected bishop of Guatemala. However, when he tried to become a judge of the Inquisition, a thorough investigation revealed his Jewish ancestry back in the Iberian Peninsula, causing his career to come to a halt. Further inquiry revealed that his grandmother had been burned by the Inquisition and accused of being a Judaizer around 1481; his nephews and nieces managed, in 1625, to obtain a letter from the Inquisition vouching for the “cleanliness of blood” of the family. Furthermore, the nephews founded an entailed estate in Oaxaca and forbade the heir of the entail to marry into the Jewish community. The university was a factor that facilitated their integration, but the Inquisition reminded them of its limits. The nephews denied their ancestors and became Citation: Ramirez, Clara. 2021. From part of the society of New Spain. We have here a well-documented case that represents the possible the Inquisition Pyre to Insertion into existence of many others. the Church: The Familial and Social Trajectory of Hernando Ortiz, a Keywords: Jewish converts; university; New Spain; Inquisition; exclusion; bureaucracy Jewish Convert in the Spanish Empire in the 16th Century. Social Sciences 10: 264. https://doi.org/10.3390/ socsci10070264 1. Introduction Hernando Ortiz de Hinojosa constitutes a case, among many potential others, in which Academic Editor: Nigel Parton the colonial university contributed to conceding civil, political and social rights to a converso (a Jew who converted to Catholicism) born in Mexico City in 1544 (Ramírez González Received: 6 January 2021 2019). We know his story only because he wanted to be a judge of the Inquisition Tribunal. Accepted: 30 April 2021 Published: 9 July 2021 Otherwise, he would have remained unknown. Historical research has found much value in the individual experiences that come to light through exceptional circumstances because Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral they raise questions about the achievements made possible by supposedly successful with regard to jurisdictional claims in institutions or legal restrictions. The importance of this type of work was highlighted by published maps and institutional affil- Carlo Ginzburg, in 1976, with his work Il formaggio e i vermi. Il cosmo di un mugnaio del ‘500. iations. He showed how a single case can dismantle generalizing stories and open windows to new possibilities, perhaps impossible to prove due to a lack of further historical documentation. The purpose of this article is to show the role of the university in the process by which the society of New Spain integrated a Jewish family provided they denied their origins. As it is well known, those who persisted in their faith were prosecuted by the Inquisition Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Courts (Israel 2002; Ginzburg 1976; Gojman Goldberg 1984). This article is an open access article Conversely, Hernando de Ortiz was able to assimilate via the university system distributed under the terms and by denying his initial religion and adopting Christianity. Those steps would have been conditions of the Creative Commons impossible if Ortiz’s parents had not migrated from Andalucía to New Spain six years Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// before he was born (Ramírez González 2013). In America, university degrees in the arts, creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ theology and law allowed Ortiz to demonstrate his conformity with the policies of the 4.0/). colonial government established by the Spanish monarchy in what is now Mexico. Soc. Sci. 2021, 10, 264. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10070264 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci Soc. Sci. 2021, 10, 264 2 of 11 This article is based on the careful analysis of three types of documentary files. First, I looked into the paperwork resulting from the investigation carried out by the Inquisition Court to ascertain Ortiz’s “Limpieza de Sangre” (racial purity of cleanliness of blood), when he endeavored to become a judge of the aforementioned Tribunal. The testimonies of all the witnesses interrogated are preserved in the files, which may be found both in New Spain and in the Iberian Peninsula. There is a copy of the documents in the General Archives of the Nation, in Mexico, in the Inquisition Branch, as the original ones located in Spain disappeared. Second, I analyzed the files documenting the competition to achieve university professorship; those are in the same archives, in the University Branch. Finally, I resorted to various “Relaciones de Méritos” (records of services) that Ortiz used to prove his diligence to the king. Those are found in the General Archives of the Indies. It is a complex documentation, which may not be fully developed in this short article, but which I studied in depth in two books. I shall refer to them in this article (Ramírez González 2013, 2019). The trajectory followed by Hernando Ortiz has laid out a template for the careers of other children of Spanish citizens born in America and has shown the potential and the limits of promotion by a university founded “in a land where greed reigns”, according to the terminology used by one of his peers (de Salazar [1554] 2001). Ortiz studied at the University of Mexico between 1560 and 1580, obtaining all the degrees offered by universities at that time, except for a medical degree. He was a professor and a consultant for several novo-Hispanic institutions. Furthermore, he became a secular clerk, starting from the minor orders and making it to the top of the church hierarchy, and he then became the bishop of Guatemala. When he decided to try and reach the highest position in the Inquisition Court, that of qualifying judge, the high inquisitor demanded that a thorough investigation be conducted to prove that his ancestors had not been Jewish or converted Jews, in order to grant to him proof of what was then called “cleanliness of blood”. In the Iberian Peninsula, such a certificate was required not only from those aiming for a high seat in the Inquisition Tribunal but also from the individuals wanting to join universities and hold functions linked to the monarchy (Caro Baroja 2000). In Mexico, all the witnesses who testified for him vouched for the fact that Ortiz was a descendant of “old Christians” and not of Jews. As a consequence, he was appointed Inquisition judge while the Supreme Inquisition validated the process. However, the Supreme Inquisition in Madrid sent the inquiry to the Inquisition of Seville so that the elderly people of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the town where his parents had been born and where his grandparents lived, could be interrogated on Ortiz’s ancestors. The elderly people of the town had not forgotten that Hernando de Sanlúcar, grandfather of the American doctor, used to be known as “king of the Jews”, since he was their leader. Moreover, in the Inquisition of Seville, a 1534 declaration made not long before his departure to America by Diego Ortiz, Hernando’s father, was found where he acknowledged that his grandmother had been sentenced and that his grandfather and mother were conversos. The inquiry was sent back to Mexico City with an order from the Supreme Inquisition that Hernando Ortiz should be barred from all the public functions he occupied, including that of inquisitorial judge, since they were forbidden to people of Jewish descent. He was allowed to retain his ecclesiastical functions: as a canon of the Mexico cathedral and as bishop-elect of Guatemala. Ortiz died two years later, in 1598, at the age of 54, without recovering the bishopric to which he had been elected (Ramírez González 2019). The case of Hernando Ortiz is not an isolated one, but when compared to others, it is particularly well documented. As a scholar and a clergyman, Ortiz was a man who trusted institutions; therefore, he wrote extensively and also requested that much about his life and career be written. We probably know more about him today than we do about any of his contemporaries (Ramírez González 2013, 2019). However, until recently, his life had not been reassessed. References to Hernando Ortiz de Hinojosa are dispersed in several works by (Schwaller 1987), (Poole 2011) and (Dussel 1970), and much of the information supplied remained imprecise or secondary. Recently, I and other authors have reexamined Soc. Sci. 2021, 10, 264 3 of 11 the importance of this figure (Pavón 2010; Nesvig 2009; Lundberg 2009; Carrillo Cázares 2006–2011; Ramírez González 2013, 2019). Today, we know that the ancestry of this historical figure harks back to an even earlier time: his great-grandmother was burned by the Inquisition in Seville around 1481; his grandparents were protected by the Dukes of Medina Sidonia in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, from where Ortiz’s parents left for Mexico City in 1538, despite the prohibitions placed upon emigration to America for Jews and their descendants (de Cadenas 1988). In the colonial city, members of Hernando Ortiz’s family became “old colonizers” thanks to an uncle of the mother who was a Dominican friar.

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